Forty years on the run and thirteen different identities. In between a life, so to speak, normal, as a volunteer at the Rotary Club, condominium manager and finally also president of a local water board in a suburb of San Diego. A man has been arrested in the United States on murder charges dating back to 1984. It is Donald Santini, 65, accused of having killed Cynthia Wooda woman from Bradenton, Florida, 33 years old at the time of the events and wanted for almost 40 years.
The man had been quickly linked to Wood’s strangulation death. Santini was in fact the last to see the victim, and the body of the woman, who disappeared on June 6, 1984, was found a few days later in a ditch with his fingerprints on it. The man, however, had immediately fled, effectively disappearing into thin air. This is why his arrest on June 7 in California, and then his extradition to Florida they caused a particular stir. “Donald Santini’s arrest closes a long-standing cold case and delivers justice for the victim and his family after nearly four decades of waiting,” Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister said in a statement.
Santini had appeared several times on the television program “America’s Most Wanted”, in 1990, in 2005 and in 2013. Over the years, Florida detectives have followed various leads passing through Texas, California itself and even Thailand, but without success. Santini used 13 identities and was finally arrested as he had been living under the name of for years Wellman Simmondsin San Diego County. “The reason I’ve been able to stay on the run so long is to live a loving and respectful lifeSantini said in a 16-page, handwritten letter from prison sent to ABC 10News. Santini said, in fact, that he has volunteered with the Rotary Club, that he has owned a Thai restaurant and that he has also managed a condominium. An “unsuspected” life that “is out of tune” with what happened before the alleged murder in 1984. In fact, before 1984 Santini served a prison sentence for raping a woman while he was in the military in Germany and was already wanted in Texas for an aggravated robbery.